Amazingly, I haven’t done it yet. As I unlock the side gate to my apartment building after work each day, I look down at the drain grate directly beneath my feet and gulp. I know it’s only a matter of time. I’m just one dropped key away from having to spend a fun-packed evening groping around up to my shoulder in filthy water.

The drain is an accident waiting to happen. But it’s not the only one in my life. Take my new coffeemaker, for example. The water is stored in a plastic container that clips on to the back of the machine. Unfortunately, it doesn’t attach very well, and so a slip is inevitable. The day is certainly coming when the entire contents spill Niagara-like from the edge of the counter and cascade down over the assorted plugs and adapters underneath. On the bright side, I enjoy a rousing firework display as much as anyone.

Or there are the two guitars that I keep by the foot of my bed. Some morning, I will certainly trip over one or other of them as I get up. It’s even possible I may trip over both at the same time—one for each foot—and roll with them along the floor in a cacophony of splintered wood, snapping strings and unearthly caterwauling, like a slightly more melodic version of a Justin Bieber concert.

But even when we can see the risks we are running, sometimes we simply cannot avoid them. The bedroom is tiny, and so the guitars have to stay where they are since there’s no other place for them. Strictly speaking, I suppose I could tuck them into bed beside me at night. But then my wife would have to sleep vertically while leaning on a guitar stand—something that up to this point in our marriage, she has never shown the slightest interest in doing.

Now, you may be wondering why I’ve taken to worrying about all this. After all, I’ve been living with the dangerously placed drain for over a decade, the guitars for about the same, and even with the potentially pyrotechnic coffeemaker for the last three or four months. What explains the sudden upsurge in my anxiety levels now?

As many of you know, I have recently handed in my notice at the company where I’ve worked for the last eleven years. In a couple of weeks, I will start a new—and in many ways, quite different—job. I have my fingers, my toes and both my eyes crossed that I won’t be an accident waiting to happen.